Mess

Find Kelly's copy of "Mess: the manual of accidents and mistakes" by Keri Smith. It's a notebook designed to stimulate artistic ideas along the lines of "Create a series of thumb-prints as a basis for drawing other objects" or "1. Alter this image by damaging it. 2."Find an interesting way to repair the damage." That sort of thing. I pore through it, looking for Kelly evidence, but it is depressingly empty.

There a couple of doodles of my own face and photograph of a staid sixties style business gent with the caption: "This man looks like he needs to let loose a little. You might want to help him out, a new hat, some glasses, facial hair perhaps." He has been given a familiar looking quiff, eyelash and philtrum combo. There are a few colour exercises and hearts rendered in brown and blue. At the start of the book, where it states "Write your own intro" she has written:

"I am creating messy art works because I am vain and wish to be admired and I want something to stimulate me to get up in the morning"

There's something emblematic about that statement. Kelly could be vain and did want to be, and was, admired. But its the creepy creeping depression of the second part of the sentence that gets me. She did need a reason to get out of bed. There were days when there was nothing she could do at at all and drawing and scraping and scribbling were a way of proving she was there, that she could have an effect, that she could move paint and ink if nothing else. Later in the book she alters the text of a page of text by scratching out certain letters. Her finished text reads:
"BBAD NEWS TODAY
ENDS HERE.
DO NOT TEAR
IS PAGE WET
DO NOT LET
WRITE ON THIS.



DO NOT FOLD"


I miss her so much.